


Truths and Dares

by Dawnwind



Category: The Invisible Man (TV 2000)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-28
Updated: 2011-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:37:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A simple game of Truth or Dare to kill time during a state-out turns into a difficult discussion of Darien's teen years. Discussion of underage sex, nothing graphic. Post Liberty and Larceny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

_"Sometimes the truth can be so unnecessary." Remington Steele_   
_"The truth shall set you free." John 8:32_

As a former thief I have to admit the first quote summed up my attitude most often-although lies can get you in a hell of a lot of trouble, believe me.

 _The trouble with the truth is that it hurts, but maybe that's the price we pay for freedom._  
Darien Fawkes

"Hobbesy, man, I've sat through some boring stakeouts before but this one…I think we both died and nobody told us," I complained, trying to stretch my long legs in the confines of the front seat of the van.

"Yeah, he may be a crime lord, but there ain't much excitement in his life." Hobbes rolled his neck around on his spine to crack the vertebrae. "He has to accept the payment sooner or later."

"Any later and I may turn to dust." I rummaged around in the fast food wrapper litter under my feet, searching for any leftover food. We'd gone through gallons of Cokes, bags of chips, hamburgers from every known burger emporium, Danish, burritos and way too much coffee in the last three days.

Stakeouts are the worst. I'm not used to sitting still, it wasn't something I did much of as a thief. With burglary you're in and out. It's speed and accuracy that counts. Faster is better. This waiting around is way too much like prison, and the van was beginning to feel way too much like a cell. I was getting seriously stir crazy.

"Any Cheetos left?" Hobbes inquired absently, checking out the mob boss's white mansion again through his binoculars.

An electrified but intricately designed wrought iron fence kept out intruders. We'd been parked, in various makes of cars, for the last three days half a block away for twelve hours a day. At least we got off for good behavior from seven p. to seven a. God knows we had the good shift. According to the notes left from night shift, they didn’t even get to watch the occasional car driving in and out to the grocery store and gas station that broke our monotony. Jeffery Duclare was the most uninteresting man in the known criminal world.

"No snacks until Alex makes another delivery of Ho-hos." I crumpled up the McDonald's French fry bag. "How bout a game?"

"We're workin' here, Fawkes. No time for kidding around," Hobbes said sternly, his binoculars still trained on the empty driveway.

"Hobbes, we're turning into statues!" I groaned. "C'mon…Truth or Dare…."

"Like a couple of teenagers?"

"Sure, why not? Can you honestly tell me you expect Duclare to walk outta there carrying a big briefcase fulla cash under his arm right now in front of us? It's been more'n three days, or more precisely over forty hours of mind numbing doldrums."

Hobbes finally turned to face me, placing the binocs in his lap, a quirky smile on his lips. "Okay, Fawkes, then I take truth."

"Yeah, for real?" I grinned back, thinking quickly. What to zing on him? "Truth--where's the most public place you ever jacked off?"

"Bus station men's room?" Hobbes gave a snort of laughter, his eyes flicking across the street to the mansion. Nothing moved.

"No dice, everybody's done it there." I smacked his arm, "That doesn't count."

"Okay." Hobbes pulled the sunglasses down from where they perched on the top of his bald spot, replacing them on his nose. "On Park Boulevard."

"That's where I live. When?"

"Last week, waitin' for you--in front of your apartment," he elaborated with a smirk.

I dropped my jaw, this was good! "In the van or on the street?"

"Street. The day you drove an' you had to change your shirt cause that mook dumped you in the mud." Hobbes shrugged, "It was dark, nothing else to do."

I was amazed and slightly impressed at his bravado. "My man."

"Yes, sirree." We traded high fives, "Now your turn."

"Dare," I said immediately. I always take that choice.

"Oh, ho, Fawkes. Then scare up a little action. Take a stroll past Duclare's place. See if the guards even notice."

Easy. I was the Invisible Man after all. I started to let the quicksilver flow, my arms going cold and then invisible, but Bobby put up a hand like a traffic cop.

"No saran wrap, Gland-boy. You take a walk like anybody else. Either that or you have to answer a truth question."

"Crap." I blew out a lung-full of air, releasing the door handle. "Right to the gate?"

"Touch that sucker," Hobbes agreed.

"Then, at least give me your hat." I took the Padres cap off the gear shift where it hung, pushed it down low over my eyes and buttoned up my disreputable tan leather jacket.

With a macho swagger, I got out on the far side of the van, assessing the house. Any guards were inside the gate, but our intel had already ascertained that they carried firepower.

"Don't take forever, either," Hobbes said out of the corner of his mouth. He'd slouched down on his spine, the picture of relaxation while I was sweating already.

"I'm going." I took the long way around Golda, walking down the block to cross in the crosswalk like a proper law abiding citizen. Luck was with me, an old woman who used a walker was making her agonizingly slow jaunt around the block and we hit the crosswalk at the same time. She did this at the same time every day. It just showed how really bored I was that I not only could predict when she usually walked, but I knew exactly how long it took for her to make the entire circle.

"Ma'am," I said pleasantly.

"I've seen you." She peered up at me with twinkling blue eyes. "Keepin' your eyes on Mr. Duclare. Can't fool ol'Iris. Even when you change cars."

Great, well, then we couldn't possibly be fooling Duclare's people either. Why then were they permitting us to stay? Any other crime lord worth his salt would have had us dumped off the pier by now, wearing lead weight jewelry.

"Miss Iris." I grinned down at her, offering my arm. "May I escort you across the street?"

"Certainly, but I always insist on knowing the name of my young escorts."

"Darien." I gave her a little bow as we started across the road. "You have a lot of young escorts?"

"The handsome men just flit around," she flirted, her face a mass of wrinkles, but underneath I could sense a memory of the pretty party girl she must have been in maybe the forties. "Stay with me while we walk past the gate. The guards all know me."

"Sounds like a plan, Miss Iris."

It was the slowest I'd ever walked in my life, but as we strolled past the portals of the manse, I trailed my hand for just a second on the gate. Despite the snail's pace, I was racing inside, my blood practically percolating from the adrenaline rush. This is what I needed. Action, excitement--uncertainty.

The guards were so used to Iris's daily constitutional that they barely took any notice of me at all. I looked good and hard at them, though. Took a good enough look to be able to identify the two of 'em in a line up, if it came to that. One was probably Samoan, built like a freight train engine, his head attached to his shoulders without benefit of a neck. The other was as stringy as a heroin addict, all fiber without an ounce of fat. He was clutching a submachine gun like the tiniest sound could set it off. I was glad to be past them and onto the relative safety of the opposite crosswalk.

Miss Iris's house, an elegant old fashioned looking rancho-style place with authentic red tiles on the roof was about one house down from where we'd parked that day. We did try to vary our parking places somewhat, but it wasn't like Duclare lived on that long of a street.

"Good afternoon, my lady," I said graciously to her when we'd reached her front porch. I'd quite enjoyed the stories of her time with the USO she'd regaled me with as we'd walked. I kind of wished I could get my Grandmother Madeline and Iris together for some tea or whatever old ladies liked. Knowing those two, it would be more like straight scotch.

"Took you long enough," Hobbes observed dryly, "Flirtin' with the old gal."

"That old woman once met President Roosevelt," I said loftily, before going on to give my descriptions of the two guards I'd seen.

"Not bad, Fawkesy." He smiled.

"Now, your turn again." I took off my jacket. It may have been slightly cold outside, but I was more than warm, despite the slow pace of the walk.

"Truth, again." He jutted out his chin as if I were going to make an issue of it. Nope.

"Okay, who'd you think is sexier, Claire or Alex?"

"Your questions are like some undersexed sophomore," Hobbes groused. "Besides I think you know the answer."

"Humor me." I smiled smugly.

"Okay, Monroe's got some curves on her…" He paused with a faraway look in his eyes as if he were seeing her again for the first time. "But Claire's got her beat all the way around. She's not just sexy, cause she doesn't work as hard at it as Monroe, but she's got class. That accent…really turns a man on."

"You always did have that Mary Poppins thing." I laughed, "Okay, I choose dare again."

"There aren't a lot of things I can come up with that you can do in the van." He huffed, frowning as he concentrated. After a moment he gave me a truly evil minded smile. "Moon the next person that comes by."

"On this street?" I objected, not because I objected to the dare, just because Iris was usually the only person we saw actually passing by on their feet.

"The first person," Hobbes warned, then went back to perusing the Duclare enclave with his binoculars.

"Then, while we wait, you have to take your next turn," I said after ten interminable minutes. I'd counted every crack in the road, and fantasy robbed every house on the block in the last three days. I was now seriously considering trying to calculate pi in my head, and I HATED calculus in school.

"Who made that rule?" Hobbes countered.

"I just did, because, if we have to wait for someone to come by, that may take a while."

"Okay," he conceded, "But that does not let you out of your turn."

"I'm aware of that." I settled more comfortably in the seat, "Which are you taking?" Afternoon sun was shining straight through the front window all but blinding me. There's no way Hobbes could possibly see anything with his damned binoculars now anyway.

"Always the truth, my friend, Bobby Hobbes does not take a dare."

"Okay, what scared you the worst? The single most frightening thing you ever did?"

After a long, increasingly uncomfortable silence, Hobbes took a deep breath, "Trying to off myself."

My heart suddenly stopped in mid-thump. Did I just hear what I thought I heard? I hadn't expected anything so heavy. "When?" I asked carefully.

"The night Vivian left me," he said shakily.

I got the feeling he hadn't planned on this discussion either.

"It was like every single thing in my life just turned to ash. I couldn't really see how obsessive I had gotten about her. I followed her around…imagined the worst things. Not just that she'd been hit by a car, or left me, but weird stuff…that enemy agents were out to get her, she was havin' Saddam Hussein's baby, that she was …"

"Well, in your line of work, enemy agents could have been out to get her," I rationalized, my chest hurting for him.

"I think she left because I was spyin' on her. I went off my meds. Your thinkin' gets really…odd after that. The only reality is the one going on inside your own head," he whispered, twisting his hands in his lap, his fingers so tightly intertwined I thought the tips would turn purple. "I begged her not to…it got messy. When she was gone, I tried to eat my piece."

"God, Bobby." I was barely breathing, the words coming out in a rush, "You don't have to tell me this if…"

"Nah, it's not like it's a state secret or anything." He smiled the saddest little crooked smile. "I sat there for the longest time, but I couldn't pull the trigger. I realized I was scared--I wasn't sure if I was scared a'dying or scared of what people would think if I did it. It just scared me. I called a shrink at three thirty in the a.m., scared the shit outta her, too, I think."

"Can I say I'm glad you didn't do it?" I asked quietly, "Cause then I would never have met the finest agent I've ever known."

"You don't have to butter me up, Fawkes." Hobbes' cheeks were pink from the praise. "It was a long time ago. You…ever thought anything like that?"

"Oh, yeah," I agreed, melancholia wrapping around the two of us like a big blanket. "When I got thrown back in prison the second time, I realized I had totally screwed up my life this time. A second tour of duty…I couldn't face those…inmates again. People I thought I'd escaped." No way was I going into the reasons I hadn't wanted to meet most of them in a dark shower again. "It seemed like that would be the easy way out, y'know, but I didn't know how. I mean, I knew the ways to do it, but there were too many and I couldn't choose…so I went to prison."

"And you got out."

"Eventually, and then, idiot that I am, got thrown back in again. Apparently I don't learn from my mistakes."

"You're just a slow learner." Hobbes nodded firmly, "I know from that."

A low slung black Corvette convertible drove past us down the short street and made a right turn onto Mistletoe Ave. I'd recognize that car anywhere, it was five star rated Alex Monroe's.

"That's the signal, I guess we get a break." Hobbes glanced quickly at me, both of us still spooked from our unexpected Oprah session. It was weird, but Hobbes was one of the few people in the entire world I felt even remotely comfortable confiding in.

"Follow that car." I ordered, knowing that another Agency vehicle would park in our space within a moment or two, to keep the Duclares under constant surveillance.

Hobbes pulled out of the parking space, following the same course the black Corvette had taken. Our usual meeting place was a small strip mall about five minutes away from Hemlock Street. That's right, Duclare lived on Hemlock street. And the demented city planner who'd named the streets in this subdivision should have been taken out and shot, because ALL the streets around here were named after deadly plants. Nightshade Road, Witchbane Court and Foxglove Lane were just a few of the other desirable places to live. Hobbes had pointed out that Foxglove was what they made Digitalis out of, a very important drug for cardiac patients, but I said it also can be used to kill people. Don't even ask why I know.

Alex had pulled up in front of Rite-Aid and was leaning against her little car, wearing black leather pants and a short jacket like some latent dominatrix, tapping her black booted foot like we were late for our bondage session. I couldn’t help it, she looked too tempting. When I climbed out of the van through the back double doors, I dropped my pants and mooned her.

Hobbes, who had gotten out of the driver's side door and was walking around the back of the van, burst into laughter at the sight. Monroe just glared and for a moment I wondered if she really did hide bondage gear in her trunk and was going to pull out cuffs and a whip to give me my punishment. I know for a fact that she does carry handcuffs in the trunk, but then, so does Hobbes. Standard spy gear.

"Playgirl won't be calling you anytime soon," Alex hissed through clenched teeth. "Pull 'em up now, Fawkes. Pre-pubescent humor is not my style."

"And I was so hoping to titillate you, Alex." I laughed, zipping up my fly before climbing down. It really was a little too cold to be baring my flesh, anyway.

"It takes a lot more than a naked hienie to titillate me," she said in a bored voice. "Anything new to report before you take a potty break and buy some more artery clogging junk food?"

"What exactly would it take to titillate you, Agent Monroe?" Hobbes asked politely, his hands folded in front of him as if he were asking her opinion on a political quandary.  
"You'll never possibly find out," she answered through gritted teeth. She must have a hell of a dentist's bill. "There's your new car over there. Sanchez and Mason will come pick up the van." She handed Hobbes the keys to a junker Chevy circa about the year I started Kindergarten. "Can we get this over with before I freeze to death?"

"If you didn't wear your clothes one size too small…" I snarked under my breath, heading for the store.

"Fawkes, I heard that!" she called.

Hobbes gave her the descriptions of the two guards while I hightailed it into Rite-Aid, buying some overly processed food before taking my time in the men's room. I inspected my snake tattoo while washing my hands. Exactly half red and half green. No need for a counteragent booster today unless something came up that made me have to go invisible, and I didn't foresee that as being likely anytime soon. The last couple of weeks, I was actually getting the shots because five to six days had passed and the quicksilver had just naturally built up. It had been a long time since I'd slipped down the red slope into madness, and that suited me just fine, thank you very much.

The old Chevy had one redeeming quality, bucket seats. I took the wheel, slouched back like one of Frank Sinatra's buds tooling my cool car through Vegas. Okay, so a guy can dream. But we had a fresh supply of coffee via the Seven-eleven next to Rite-Aid, beef jerky, Twinkies and, for nutrition, some of that parmesan cheese flavored Smart Pop popcorn. Hobbes had also sprung for half a dozen spring rolls and fried rice, so we could have a proper dinner. I swear, sometimes that guy is worse than a mother, and he's not that much older than me.

I felt like we should be cruising for babes or something--anything to revel in our sixty minutes--make that 28 minutes now--of freedom. Like that movie Cinderella Liberty where James Caan has to be back on his ship by midnight or he turns into a pumpkin and gets thrown in the brig. Maybe just a quick beer at the nearest bar, cause my brig was a car sized parking space in front of Duclare's house, and I knew I hadn't finished my sentence yet.

After an hour off from our enslavement, we were back, at a slightly different angle to Duclare's house, but still stuck on Hemlock Street. If something didn't break on this case soon, I was going to grow roots and be planted on Hemlock forever.

I took my turn with the binoculars since Hobbes was taking a short siesta, but nothing had changed since--oh--about two years ago. The housekeeper, a dark Mexican woman with a permanent scowl drove her car out of the drive at exactly four o'clock, per usual. Our back-up team had followed her countless times. She always drove over to a bakery, picked up a fresh loaf of French bread, some sort of dessert pastries packed all nice as you please in a pink box and returned home. She was like clockwork. Apparently Jeffery Duclare can't eat stale bread. What a revelation for his top secret file. Crime Lord has a picky palate.  
"Hobbes," I said out loud, hoping for signs of wakefulness. Nothing from that corner, either. Dull.

I munched on my first Twinkie of the night, wondering if I ate enough of them would I be able to get off on the Twinkie defense like that guy in 'Frisco who killed the mayor back when I was in grade school. Huh--of course, I had the temporary insanity plea in the bag, if I ever needed to play my ace card. _It's all a chemical imbalance, your honor, sir, honest._ Too bad that wouldn't have helped me get out of my second prison sentence.

"Anything move yet?" Hobbes muttered sleepily.

"Not even the earth, Hobbesy." I sighed melodramatically.

"You up for more Truth or Dare?" He straightened, rubbing a hand over his bald head, then scrubbing the sand out of his eyes with his palms.

"Sure," I said with more interest. " But I thought you said it was sophomoric."

"Your questions were sophomoric, Smart Guy," Hobbes retorted, digging into a the bag of popcorn. "And it's your turn, but no more dares, cause I can't think up anything else you can do in the confines of a car."

"Bob-by, I'm surprised at you," I teased, reaching for some popcorn. After all, it advertised that eating it made you smarter. "You can't think of anything to do in a car?"

"Funny, Dobie Gillis. We're not necking in the back seat." He smacked my leg, sending a wave of heat up to my groin.

"Hobbes, I like a little more room, but if you can manage to get it into such a tight space, I can too," I said straight faced.

"Tuesday Weld is more my style than you are." He gave me a hot look under his dark eyelashes, daring me to start something while on a stake out. He'd trained me better than that. I might want to, but I wouldn't compromise the situation, or our standing as agents by starting any makeout session while parked outside a suspect's house.

"Just as long as it isn't Wednesday Addams," I snarked. "And that isn't quite what you said last weekend. All weekend."

"That was then, this in now." He tossed a piece of popcorn at me.

"The Outsiders," I responded instantly. "And--uh--Rumble Fish."

"What?"

"Oh, I thought maybe we'd changed the game and were playing 'name all the novels written by teenaged authors'." I tossed a puffed kernel back at him and he caught it in his mouth.

"Who wrote those?"

"S.E. Hinton."

"Never heard of him."

"Oh, Hobbesy, some great stuff. About growin' up and being in a gang--and he's a she."

"For real?"

"For real."

"Did she write that one about the little girl who wants to get her period?" He inquired, brushing white powdered cheese off his hands. The trouble was it just sort of floated around in the car like parmesan flavored dust motes.

"I think you mean Judy Blume. She's a pretty good writer, too."

"You read all the kid novels, Fawkes?"

"Apparently you read some of 'em, too," I pointed out, putting more popcorn into my mouth.

"Nah, just heard about her on the news. Some library in Boston banned her books."

"That's a damned shame. Kids should be exposed to whatever turns them on."  
I demanded righteously. "If you can read about--all that teenaged angst stuff, know that it's not just you going through it. It makes it all easier, man." I huffed indignantly. "Besides, banning books is unconstitutional."

"She write about sex?"

"I haven't read her entire literary output, Hobbes."

"Just asking." He shrugged, looking out towards the mansion again. It was near dark, since it was winter and we were off that candle saving confusion known as daylight savings time. "How old were you your first time?"

"Hobbes, I take the dares." My heart sped up at just the thought of answering him.

"All out, my friend. Only the truth from now on."

"Then it isn't truth OR dare."

"What were you? Seventeen? Eighteen?" he persisted. It was dark enough in the car that I couldn't quite make out his expression. What was his angle here? Did he really want to know or was he just getting back at me on for baiting him about making out? I don't think I wanted to know the answer to that question.

"No, I wasn't."

"Aw, c'mon. Fawkes, I know what goes on in prison. You can't tell me you were a virgin when you went in."

"No, I wasn't." I didn't want to talk about this. The game had gone from a fun diversion to something way too serious. First him talking about suicide and now this. When I was young, it had been different, but over the years I was less and less apt to talk about my first time. There wasn't anything to brag about anymore. Something unsavory had snuck in over the years, tainting the memory. When I was younger it had seemed so good. Now, from an adult point of view, there was something else there that hinted of stuff I'd didn't want to dwell on.

"When, then? Tell me and I'll tell you. I was seventeen--senior winter prom--and it was in the backseat, I'll have you know, of my Dad's big ol'Ford. The whole cliché."

I don't even know why I spoke. "Fourteen."

"What? Did I hear you right?" Hobbes attempted a laugh, but his whole demeanor had changed, he was less jokey. He turned towards me and I was very glad of the covering darkness.

"Man, you were some precocious son of a bitch. Fourteen? With the head cheerleader or something? You musta been a tall, good lookin' kid. An older girl, I'm guessing?"

"You could say that." I agreed softly, my guts twisting. I really didn't want to talk about it, but somehow the words just kept coming out as if I had no control over my own mouth. "You remember Liz? My old partner?"

"Liz? That two bit thief?" He sounded amazed, then angry. "Fawkes, you were fourteen your first time?" There was a long pause as if the facts were sorting themselves out in his brain. Hobbes can always see the big picture, sometimes, especially this time, when I wished he couldn't.

A weird formless fear nestled inside of me. Why did this suddenly seem worse than ever before? I wanted those comfortable, warm memories of Liz's arms around me in the long afternoons after high school, but they didn't resurface. Instead, niggling doubts bubbled up, second guessing the whole experience. The painful knot in my belly kept twisting the sweet memories of the joyful discovery of sex.

"How old was she?" Hobbes demanded sharply, his voice like a whipcrack.

"Uh, I dunno." I flinched, trying to remember back that far when everything was all an adventure and the criminal world excited the hell out of me. Hell, Liz excited me. She'd pulled jobs when I was just in short pants, metaphorically. "In her twenties?"

"More like late twenties." he exploded with an expansive hand gesture that hit the car seat. "You were fourteen fuckin' years old? That's disgusting."

"It wasn't." I said quickly, my heart thudding. "It was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me, okay?" I wanted to preserve that happy, oversexed, gawky kid under glass, away from the future that would drag him down. I wanted that first time with Liz to have been perfection, as I'd thought at the time, and not some perversion. "Yes, I was fourteen. And it was incredible… exciting…like fireworks and carnival rides all together in one sweaty encounter on the bed." I could remember I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

"Do the words statutory rape mean anything to you?" He said in an accusatory tone, smacking the dashboard in anger.

There it was, pulled roughly out into the light after all this time. He'd finally said the words I'd been hiding from for nearly twenty years. Liz had initiated me into a life of crime big time--first by guiding me into the fine art of cat burglary, then by seducing me. It had been like discovering the Emerald City of Oz, all bright lights, instant gratification and _ohmygod_ , Sex. I'd been on top of the world, almost condescending to my friends when high school had commenced. There I was, a Freshman, with a potentially lucrative career and going way past the first base my friends boasted about.

It hadn't felt bad back then. But somehow the years had dirtied the experience. What had changed? Me? Because now at the advanced age of 34, I knew I'd never be able to fathom taking a teenager to bed. Not even an 18 year old in college.

"It wasn't like that." I wanted desperately to explain that she had been mother, sister, lover, goddess and whore all wrapped into one muscular, curvy woman, She'd filled my senses, been my world when everything else around in my life had turned hard and cold. "I started it."

"You seduced her, huh?" Hobbes asked sarcastically. "How did that go again?"

"I did. I wanted it, Hobbes." I needed to defend myself. Her.

 _God, had I wanted it. Something to make me feel good._

Kevin, my genius elder brother treated me like I had a second head. Aunt Celia meant well, but she was sweet, meek and easily manipulated. And I was admittedly a shit. Cocky, swaggering, with a chip on my shoulder the size of Rhode Island to hide all the insecurities about having been abandoned by my father, orphaned by my mother and shipped off to live with relatives whom I hardly recognized and resented for not being my real parents. I stole for the rush, the adrenaline high that could smooth out the rough edges, soften the teacher's comments. 'He's a smart boy, but he doesn't live up to his potential'.

 _Fuck the academic potential._ Liz had seen the real me under all that macho posturing. She'd led me into a life of crime like a calf to the cow's teat.

I'd met her after I'd been caught by the police one too many times for shoplifting. Only this time, I'd tried to boost a bigger prize, her 1982 Trans Am sports car. Bitchin' wheels. She'd come back just as the officer was collaring me, and unaccountably vouched for me, saying I was her friend's kid, that she'd sent me to unlock the car. Since I'd used a coat hanger to pop the lock and had started in on crossing the wires to hotwire the engine, I don't think the cop believed her. He told Uncle Peter anyway. When I got home that night Uncle Peter hit me for the first time. From the look on his face, I think it was the first time for him, too. I think that was the beginning of the end for us. I had no one left in my family.

I'd wanted somebody on my side. Who saw possibilities in me and promoted my self worth. Not that I'd known those precise terms at fourteen, but I'd recognized that deep inside, I was achingly unhappy.

Liz changed that. I was deliriously in love with her, her life and what she could teach me. She gave me the tools to what I considered a really useful trade and wanted to spend time with me, something none of my biological family did. They all had lives of their own: Uncle Peter spent all of his nonwork hours closeted in the basement with Kevin-the-brainiac, teaching him the secrets of the universe. Aunt Celia made the rounds of all the lady's clubs: gardening, cooking, flower arranging. I'm sure that if I could have been planted, baked or stuck in a vase, she would have understood me better. Instead, while I loved her for the gentle, kind woman she was, we were as far apart as if I'd lived on the moons of Saturn.

I laughed, but even I could hear my voice was shaky, there was so much I wanted Hobbes to understand. Liz had saved me. I don't know where that too tall fourteen year old would have ended up, but he had been in a bad place when Liz had picked him up. Some would say she put me on a leash and led me to a worse place. After all. I ended up in Juvie and then in prison because of her influence, but I still say Liz saved my life. _"Faster is better."_ That was Liz's philosophy of life. And I took it to heart. I wanted all of her world. Now, everything fast."

"She taught you what she knew, huh?"

"The first time I saw her nude…we were hanging out in her pool and she went to change… I watched." Even now my cheeks flamed at the memory of that sight, my first of a fully mature woman in the bloom of life. Not some perky teenager still uncertain about her emerging body, but a woman. "She came back into the room before I realized it, and then apologized when she saw what I'd been…doing." _God. this was embarrassing._ "And held out her hand to me. She had a whole different approach to sex."

Liz had been like warm silk against my overly sensitive skin. Just the touch of her had aroused me, her hand in mine, telling me it was all right, that she took it as a compliment. When she'd put her arms around me I'd nearly lost the margin of control I'd been maintaining. Then she'd led me to the bed and my world exploded. I'd never even seen more than the upper swell of a girl's breast before that. Now, suddenly, there I was with my hands, my mouth all over that naked warmth of hers. I'd been uncertain, but Liz's hand guided me, as she'd done when she'd taught me how to drill a lock or slice carefully through window glass. From those first awkward gropes, Liz showed me there were some times, some places, where faster wasn't always better.

Liz taught me the art of sex slowly, sometimes instructing, sometimes lying back so I could do my own research, awakening every nerve in my body as if they'd never been alive before. All that long afternoon, our bodies so close I could still smell the mingling odor of sex and sweat, she used slow touch to sculpt me into her perfect creation. It had been dreamlike oasis of passion, and I became her student in all things--both thievery and sex. There was nothing dirty there, and Liz was a consummate teacher, making sure her pupil was totally satisfied. Her love was as real and as illusionary as a reflection in a mirror.

"Yeah, like making out with teenaged boys," Hobbes spat.

"Damn it, Bobby, stop it." My whole being raged with a combination of anger and pain. "She was there for me. Liz saw ME when everybody else, including oh so perfect Kevin, my aunt and uncle already thought I was a punk kid."

"You are a punk kid," Hobbes said so gently it made my chest ache. "Darien, she used you."

"Nobody was used, Hobbes. I made my choice. I coulda said no."

To be truthful, I would never have said no, her allure was too strong. What's that name? Svengali? She bewitched me and I didn't have a clue, because every teenaged hormone known to science had been racing straight to my cock. "I wanted everything she could teach me. She'd been around the world-like…that TV thief, Al Mundy. She had such power, she knew things I couldn't even imagine. I wanted it all, like I'd never wanted anything else in my life up to then." My voice was rough, defensive, and I could feel the painful pressure of tears in the back of my throat. "And to have sex thrown in on top, like a cherry? It was so fuckin' perfect."

Hobbes stared back at me, his expression just visible from the streetlamp just past Iris's house. There was a weird aura of anger radiating off of him that I didn't like having directed at me.

"Look, I don't expect you to understand, okay? Why the hell do you think I didn't want to talk about it?" I swallowed audibly, flushing the unshed tears away, "You wanted to know, now you do. You have no right to judge me for something that happened twenty years ago." I stared straight ahead, my hands gripping the steering wheel. I wished I could just roar away, leave this conversation behind, except, of course, Hobbes would still be in the car with me.

Duclare's ornate gated driveway was as silent as always, the movements of the guards no longer visible, even though he had security flood lights that could have doubled as arc lights on some movie set. I could even make out the license plate of the car parked just beyond the gate.


	2. Two

Truths and Dares

(part two)

"Fawkes…" Bobby spoke after a long silence, his voice an odd mixture of gentleness and anger, making the words sharp and distinct, no matter how softly he was speaking. "You were a fourteen year old kid. You ever met a fourteen year old who could think with anything other than his dick? What she did was wrong. Wrong in ways you're not able to see." He sighed, and some of the anger was diffused. "You trusted her. She was the adult and she had to know better. She abused your trust, Fawkes, because she had no right to sleep with you."

"What about my rights?" I countered, just to argue. God, I wanted out of the car.

"There are laws to protect your rights, and she violated them. She violated you. She made a bad choice all the way around, my friend."

"Becoming my mentor was a bad choice, thanks a lot, my friend," I spat bitterly.

"She betrayed the trust of a minor, and set you up for a fall."

"She didn't betray me, Hobbes. She loved me, a little, anyway." I couldn't look at him any longer, I felt ripped apart inside. Those perfect memories of a hot summer's day were fading, being replaced by Hobbes' ugly words, changing what I'd cherished. "I needed somebody, Hobbes, for a while, she was all I had."

"Fawkes…" he started, reaching out to me.

I jerked my elbow out of reach, rolling down the window to give me something to do, even though cold air swept into the overheated interior of the car. "You think she abused me, I think she saved my life. A difference of opinion. Let's just drop any more discussion."

"I will if you can," he said softly.

"That's why I always take the dares." I focused my eyes on a car driving past Duclare's house, its sleek green sides almost glowing in the bright lights from his driveway. There was our relief. They circled the block as if looking for a parking place as I turned the key, bringing the Chevy's V8 engine to life. "A dare is so much safer than the truth."

I left Hobbes off at the Agency, depositing him next to the van without more than a one word goodbye. I couldn't talk to anyone right then, couldn't eat, and found to my dismay that I couldn’t sleep. I didn't even toss and turn, I just stared up at the ceiling of my studio, wide awake, the evening's conversation replaying over and over in my head like I'd left my CD player on repeat and now couldn’t turn off my least favorite song.

I got up, wandering around restlessly, knowing I'd be a zombie in the morning for day four of the never-ending stakeout if I didn't get some shut eye.

Liz. Beautiful, complicated, difficult, completely amoral Liz. I'd worshipped her as a young teenager, wanting to spend all my waking hours with her. School had never been hard for me. I could read the book or maybe listen with half an ear to the lecture and still ace the tests, if I wanted to.

I'd no longer wanted to. I entered high school with fairly good grades from Eighth grade, but none of that mattered to me any longer. I cut school so often that I once ran into my English teacher at a store where I was practicing the fine art of fleecing the cashier out of a twenty with a complicated patter to distract her counting. The English teacher amazingly remembered me, but I had no recollection of her. I got my twenty and renewed visits from the truant officer, Well, Aunt Celia got the visits, since I was never home. She cried when I lied that I _had_ been at school. Uncle Peter just grounded me, like that was any sort of solution. Kevin had stopped talking to me at all.

I didn't care any longer. If they were going to turn their backs on me, I'd turn mine on them. I had Liz, and that was the way I wanted it. We spent nearly all of our time together--practicing B and E skills, and then those of a more intimate kind in her big California King bed. The problem was, life can get in the way of what we want, and even what we don't. First I found out that Liz was unfaithful to me. It hurt so badly I nearly botched a job, earning a tongue lashing of major proportions from the woman I loved, and she had a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush.

There was no real reason to have expected faithfulness from her. I wasn't exactly blameless myself, having done a little more than just ogle at several of my female classmates during the class picnic. But I was an egocentric teenager and I wanted my woman, exclusively. To see her with a much older man out late at night sent shafts of pain straight through my cock. Who was he? Why was she with him? Had they done the nasty on the same bed where she'd tutored me?

Instead of joining a gang of disreputable friends for a little late night vandalism of the rival high school's playing field, I'd followed Liz and her date, using all the stealthy little tricks she'd taught me. I could blend into the shadows of the night, walk as silently as a cat, disappear almost completely. A teen-aged invisible man.

After that, our relationship changed. I wanted more a more equal split, less of an apprentice status, and there was no way she was going to give it to a punk still in high school. I still craved her, wanting that lithe, strong body against me after a particularly exhilarating job, to celebrate our success, but her hold on me was slipping. And after an arrest that got me half a year in Juvie and her a short stay in prison, I thought maybe I had lost her forever. But she found me again, and while I was lying through my teeth to my Uncle and Aunt that I really was getting my life together and finishing high school, she and I resumed a relationship. Only I thought of myself as a adult now, and I changed the rules. Hers began to feel way too restrictive.

I could get jobs on my own, plan what I wanted to steal. I had some new tricks I'd picked up in Juvie, and a cocky, shit kicking attitude that irritated the hell out of everybody I knew. As years passed, Liz was always my anchor and my albatross, we didn't always work together any longer but I could feel her presence in every thing I did. When ever she was in town she attracted me like the proverbial moth to the flame, and she did burn too brightly. Even then, I was dazzled and damaged at the same time. In my early twenties, I began to resent the power she had over me until we fought constantly, finally breaking up without a backwards look.

Until last year when she'd reappeared as if nothing had happened, wanting me to help her with 'one last job'. Only, my whole life was different now, and I saw her so differently. She was still sexy, still desirable and still had such a sway over me it made my head swim as if I were still fourteen. I'm not, and I finally exerted my own free will, changing the equation in ways that surprised her.

And in the end, I'd basically let her get away before Hobbes or the cops could arrest her. Is there some lingering infatuation left? I don't think so, but Liz was such a huge part of my life, my maturation process, that she will always loom large in my personal history. I think though, I've finally snapped the chain that linked me to her.

Which got me thinking about why had she picked me? What had this apparently successful thief seen in a rotten little kid trying to hot wire her car? Why had she remained in a small back water town for over four years? Oh, she had taken out of state jobs quite regularly during those years which I wasn't part of, but she'd always returned. She always had one more trick to teach me, one more little skill she wanted to impart. But what had kept her there? Me? I hadn't been that good of a cat burglar, no matter what I'd boasted at the time. Had she really been looking for someone to control? To mold completely to her own image? Had she really just used me as a power trip, to massage her own ego?

I felt nauseated and hot, unable to even tolerate the confines of my own apartment. It was not yet dawn when I headed to the beach to run, blindly chasing the last vestiges of my teenaged innocence. My feet slapped wet sand, leaving a trail of footprints that lasted only seconds before they were washed away by the advancing tide. Inside, my soul ached for the comfort Liz had once afforded. She had protected me in her arms while launching me into the great world, armed with her knowledge and power. She had left her imprint on me, and suddenly I wished the tide could wash that away, too.

I don't know how I knew when to turn and run home but I had just enough time to shower and change before Hobbes showed up in a powder blue Saturn. Where was the Fat Man getting all these cars? Was there some rental place that specialized in different models for every stakeout? The interior of this one smelled like old cigars and I wrinkled my nose, folding myself into the passenger seat and tuning out Hobbes' early morning patter all the way to Hemlock street.

Parking on the opposite end of the street from our previous vantage point I could now see past the gates to view part of the mansion's front portico and a lone maid sweeping the walk in the fresh morning air.

Hobbes made a show of sweeping the area with his binoculars before settling back with a bakery bag of pastries. He opened the lid on a cup of coffee from Starbucks, taking an appreciative sniff at the rich aroma, then dumped two packets of sugar in, stirring it with one of those tiny red and white sticks. I'd finished my own cup about two seconds after we'd left the Starbucks parking lot, my brain still as foggy as a London street shot in a Sherlock Holmes movie. Hobbes held out the bag invitingly after selecting a bearclaw for himself, but my guts were still in knots and all the earlier cup of coffee had done was leave me wired. I was exhausted, anxious and jittery, a perfect combo to spend the day sitting still in a car that smelled liked a bunch of bulldogs used it to play poker and smoke stogies.

"You'll never guess where I went last night after you left me off," Hobbes said brightly, trying to start the morning off on a better note than we'd left it the night before.

I wasn't interested in anything he had to say. I stared out at the mailman starting his deliveries on the far end of the block where Hemlock intersected with Nightshade Drive.

"Went to the library," Hobbes continued on conversationally as if I were paying the least bit of attention. "Found some of the books you recommended. Had a hard time locatin' 'em, too, cause they weren't in the section I usually go to."

"You spend a lot of time in the library?" I asked sarcastically.

"Nice quiet place to read." He nodded, "I like to read, Fawkes, whatever you may think about me."

Okay, that was a low blow. I may belittle Hobbes on occasion, but I acknowledged that he knew his stuff. In fact, he knew a lot of stuff. Hobbes was one of those people who can come up with the most amazing facts, trivia, inane information that suddenly come in handy at the most unlikely times.

"What books did I recommend?" I asked reluctantly, not really remembering the conversation about books.

Twisting around to pull a canvas book bag out of the backseat, Hobbes fished around inside until he located a library book and tossed it into my lap. "I liked it. Read the whole thing last night."

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. My eighth grade reading assignment for extra credit. At the time I was still actually doing most of my schoolwork. And I'd liked it, too, a lot. Which had surprised me since most of the time what the teachers assigned were by dead authors who wrote in iambic pentameter. S.E. Hinton wrote about teenagers.

"You should reread it." Hobbes squinted at me, the sun coming straight in through the windshield. "See how young a fourteen year old really is. How vulnerable. Then you tell me that woman didn't take something from you."

I wondered how long before he'd start in on me again. Hobbes may have a few mental problems, but forgetfulness wasn't one of them. He had a memory like a steel trap and never let go of his train of thought without one hell of a struggle.

 _Crap._

"How do you go from a book about gang kids who kill a guy to my life?" I tossed the book back at him.

"Innocence, my friend. The theme of the book, in case you'd forgotten." He opened the book, flipping a few pages before finding page 69, and reading the last lines of a poem first written by Robert Frost, then used by Hinton to illustrate her hero Ponyboy's forcible thrust into manhood. "So dawn goes down to day, nothing gold can stay."

"I wasn't innocent, Hobbes. I was always a thief. Liz saw that."

"Nobody's life is set in stone at that age, Fawkes. That thief wasn't the real you. That person is still inside you--a sweet, trusting lonely kid who needed a friend and Liz was NOT the person you needed to turn to."

"Well, she was what I had," I said bitterly, thinking about Kevin for some unfathomable reason. Oh, there had been moments back then when Kevin and I managed to communicate in the same language, but his older, protective brother shtick had ended about the time I got picked up by the police when I was twelve or thirteen. By then, he'd begun to immerse himself in the world of science, and my directionless, angry descent into teen-aged angst had not interested him in the least.

If Kevin had been there for me, would things have changed? In The Outsiders, Ponyboy finally comes to a resolution with his eldest brother Darryl, and is welcomed into the family fold. I don't think I ever felt that kind of acceptance, ever.

"You were a lonely mixed up kid without a back up. She filled up that vacuum with her own crap that she shouldn't have shoved onto the shoulders of a fourteen year old," Hobbes said carefully. "I am proud to know you, do you know that? You've had enough shit thrown at you your whole life that some people would have given it up, but you just keep on trying."

"Then why are you so mad at me?" I was confused, his words were so kind but he still sounded like he was going to bite my head off.

"Partner, I'm not mad at you." Hobbes sighed. "I'm angry at her. A grown woman who took advantage of a kid who needed a lot more guidance than how to pick a lock and get around an alarm system in the dark. I kinda wish that cop had picked you up, before that woman had gotten her claws in you so deep."

"Fuck you, Hobbes," I exploded. I'd have gotten out of the car and walked home, but we were on a stakeout, and I had some professional ethics left. Besides, what he was saying was starting to break through my defenses. And if there's one true thing in this world, it's that Bobby Hobbes has never lied to me. He's not trying to bullshit me here, so what if he's right? About all of it?

There was a long silence when both of us stared straight ahead. Hobbes didn't move for so long I began to wonder if I'd broken whatever it was that we had between us. That scared me. Hobbes was…I don't know what exactly Hobbes is to me, but I'm not sure I could live without him anymore. Just when I was seriously beginning to freak, he spoke.

"You have, many times."

"W-what?" I stuttered.

"Fucked me," he said succinctly.

That started giggles that appeared out of no where. I guess I was too wound up, or way to buzzed from the coffee, but the giggles bubbled up and I was helpless to prevent them. I laughed so hard I was as limp as a wet noodle afterwards, unable to breathe evenly without great heaving gasps of air. "You're not mad at me?" I asked breathlessly, knowing it came out sounding like some pathetic six year old, but that's about how I felt just then.

"I already answered that one." He sighed. "Fawkes, I meant that I wished things had turned out differently. Maybe if you'd of spent the night in the slammer at fourteen instead of going with that woman, you could have…I kinda wish I'd have been there."

"In Cold Springs?" I wasn't entirely following his logic, but I knew what he meant. "Mr. Marine takes on the punk ass kid."

"Yeah, woulda buzz cut your hair, straightened you up and had you in basic inside of a week," Hobbes boasted, running a hand over my disheveled 'do. "Drop to the ground and give me twenty push ups, soldier," he ordered in his best Marine drill sergeant voice.

"Hard to do in Saturn, sir." I gave him a snappy salute, my throat tight with emotion. What if Bobby had been around then? I might have had a real friend. It didn't take any stretch of imagination to realize that Liz had never been one to me. Oh, I think I'd known it even then. She was everything a lonely, misguided kid could want, but in the end--a friend? No.

Bobby and I had started out wary compatriots, joined together at the hip because of the gland and the Fat Man's orders. Our friendship had evolved so covertly that it snuck up on both of us, surprising the hell out of me because once I recognized his friendship for what it was, I realized I'd never had a real friend in my life before. I'd had buddies, acquaintances, and lovers, but nobody who's company I enjoyed just because. I liked just hanging with Bobby doing nothing. I doubt I could have stood even one day on a stakeout with anyone else. Hobbes let me into his soul. He's taught me everything I know about the spy business, and there's still a lot I need to learn, but he never judges me the way Liz did. He's never told me I wasn't good enough, or smart enough, whatever, he just gives me the push to go forward.

There's a deceptive gentle strength in Robert Hobbes, and a sweetness that he doesn't show to the world very often. I feel privileged to have worked with him, and even if our relationship hadn't progressed to the current level, I know I would have been honored to have learned from a pro like him.

The last time I saw her, Liz told me I was a bad thief because I developed a conscience. Maybe that made me a bad thief, but I never developed that conscience, it was always there. In fact, working with her, I had to stifle it, to measure up to her standards of behavior. A good thief was fast, cunning and utterly ruthless. In a way, just like a good spy. The problem is, I'm not ruthless, but Bobby understands this. In fact, I think he understands this about me better than I do myself. I like to think I'm the Hardened Con who's served time in the joint with the bad boys and made it through to the other side. That gave me a hard edge, but the conscience never left. Unfortunately, since that's how I ended up getting arrested and convicted the last time, by following my conscience and trying to revive that old man who keeled over from a heart attack in front of me.

Well, I couldn't just leave him there, could I?

Not me, but Liz Morgan would have, I think.

To Bobby Hobbes, having a conscience isn't a liability.  
"Maybe you're right, maybe she did use me…but I didn't do anything to stop her," I said tightly, but so low I don’t think Hobbes heard me. He was concentrating on the main house with his binoculars, studying a figure standing on the portico talking to one of the guards.

"Did you just say what I think you said?" he asked, never taking his eyes away from the binocs.

"You want me to say you told me so? Want me to say you were right?" I spoke bitterly, seeing Liz in my memory, wrapped in a negligee in the middle of the afternoon, waiting for me to come back after detention. She'd help me with my homework and then we'd roll around on her big bed, dropping my clothes over the side while she fondled my always erect cock. Just the sight of her could bring me off. Then, once play time was finished she'd get down to brass tacks, endlessly drilling me on ways to break into a house, different methods of opening a safe or disable an alarm system. Whenever I'd whine, she'd remind me of the lovemaking and what a sacrifice she was making to teach me the 'right' ways to do things.

I don't get it. Why? What were her motives? Why had she picked me, a punk kid not even in high school yet when we first met? What had she seen in me? I wanted—needed--to think it was cuz she saw something special, unique, in me and wanted to foster that child. And that after we spent time together, I began to mean something to her. That she loved me. But maybe I was wrong. Plain wrong about a lot of things, because she left me in the end. Went off without even saying goodbye. If I had meant so much to her, she never would have left. I'd have been able to keep her if I'd done what she asked of me, been what she wanted me to be. But I'd failed, and she left without a look backward, leaving me alone.

"I just want you to see things as they really stand and not some romantic vision of the past." He looked over at me, brown eyes boring into me with an intensity that bordered on frightening. "I want to change who you think you are, Fawkes. You're better than she ever let you believe. Than anyone ever let you believe."

"If I'm such a hot shot, why'd she bail on me?" I threw out savagely, "I wasn't good enough for her."

"Don't go there, my friend." Hobbes gave a dismissive wave of his hand, throwing Liz out the window. "You're better than I ever thought you were when we first met. _That's_ the reality here. And she kept you from seeing the good inside yourself. Your romanticized view of the past in a fantasy, Fawkes. One that you've been holding onto like a security blanket for twenty years because you don't want to see that someone you trusted, that maybe you thought loved you, would hurt you, deceive you that badly."

"Stop trying to psychoanalyze me, Dr. Freud. I didn't hate my mother."

"But you should hate Liz."

 _Oh God, hate Liz?_ I hated the feelings that thought stirred up, my belly tightening into a twisted knot of intestines. I couldn't hate her, she'd been my teacher and confident, lover and goddess. And she'd pointed me straight down a path to prison, encouraging me to lie, cheat and steal. What friend does that? What kind of mother leads her child to that kind of hell?

My mother. Dead in a car accident when I was ten. I hardly thought of her except in that hero worship way a small boy has for his mother. I'd never gotten to know her in any other way. My relationship with Aunt Celia had been a vaguely loving one, but we'd hardly ever ventured into real trusting, honest child/parent roles. So, I'd been left adrift, reaching out to tie my anchor to the first woman who paid attention to me. I thought I'd known Liz inside and out. In the Biblical sense I had, but her real self was as hidden away as a diamond in Fort Knox. And the one safe she hadn't let me crack was her inner self. I'd wanted a mother and she'd given me a mistress.

If I hated her, then what did I have left? Nothing. I hurt as if knives were skewering me.

"So, Mr. I-Have-All-The-Answers, how am I supposed to feel about all this, huh?" I wanted to strike out at Hobbes, knock down all his carefully build up arguments until I was back in my safe corner again. "You've been to half the psychiatrists in San Diego, what kind of insight does all that experience give you? That I'm a messed up ex-thief who didn't recognize when he was being screwed into the bed by a conniving witch? Hobbes, I can't….I can't…." I didn't want to cry in front of him but the emotions were threatening to drown me and I couldn't see which was way up.

"It tells me that you're hurting right now," Hobbes said gently, reaching over to rub my arm. His touch was so pure it burned and right then I felt so dirty. "That you have lots of shit to work through and we can table this discussion for another time, if you need to."

"Well, thanks for that consideration, Mr. Roberts-Rules-of–Order. I wouldn't want to be out of line here. Do I need to second?"

"I'll always be your second, Fawkes." Hobbes turned back to his study of Duclare's house as if he hadn't just promised to be there for me always. Always. And I knew it was a bonified truth, because Bobby Hobbes doesn’t lie. In fact, he's obsessive about the truth, which was a real hard thing for me to get around. Liz didn't believe in the truth. She'd have lied to her own mother, but I think the woman had kicked the bucket long before her baby girl started robbing houses for a living.

To Liz, there were only two things that were sacrosanct--the job and planning the job. Well, and money, which I guess goes without saying. Everything else was her own personal game of life, which she could alter any way she felt like it. One week I'd be her lover, the next week just her apprentice, learning at the master's knee. Sometimes, the whipping boy, someone on whom she could safely heap abuse when a job went sour. I never knew precisely where I stood with her. She'd kept me off balance the whole time we’d been partners.

Partners. We'd never been truly partners. Liz had commanded and I'd obeyed, until I got too big for my britches and started talking back. That's when the split started to develop. Liz didn't like me taking a more adult role in things. When she didn't have little Darien Fawkes to kick around anymore, she'd left me holding the bag, just about literally.

Hobbes was a real partner. We had equal say in what we did together. I have my field of expertise and he has his. Even though he's been doing this longer, and has worlds more field experience than I do, if I offer a suggestion, he listens. He listens to my ideas, and we work together to formulate a plan. It's fifty/fifty split, something my old friend Liz would never give to anyone.

"I'm beginning to think Ol' Duclare is agoraphobic," Hobbes observed   
conversationally.

I was momentarily startled, unable to process how to drop back into the banter. Duclare was a safe subject, without the hidden landmines my own history held. "That or a vampire," I ventured.

"Nah, cause then he'd be out at night, which accordin' to Hawthorne and Zemke ain't happening." Hobbes rubbed his belly, even I could hear the faint rumblings coming from his stomach. I was astounded to note by the dashboard clock that it was quarter to eleven. We'd sat dissecting my life for hours. "A'course, he could be like that guy on the Angel show."

"You mean Angel?" I was back in the game again, my voice dripping with just the right amount of teasing sarcasm.

"Yah, smart-ass, Angel. He drinks pigs blood straight outta the refrigerator." Hobbes' expression showed his pure distaste for that idea. "Well, that just cured my hunger pains."

"Y'know, I think I've seen him put it in the microwave."

"Like that's anymore palpable. You watch it last week?" Hobbes glanced over at me finally, apparently judging it now safe to totally interact and not just pretend as if we were on the phone or something.

"Where he and the green-faced guy were singing to the baby?" I asked, pushing up my shades against the almost noonday sun.

"Lorne."

"Who?"

"The green-faced guy, who used to have the nightclub, is Lorne."

"Lorne? What kinda name is that? Sounds like a girl's name."

"That would be Lau-ren." Hobbes broke the name into two distinct syllables, "There are lots of guys named Lorne. He was named after Lorne Greene, of Bonanza fame."

"Ha ha, I get it. Now that I think of it there's also Lorne Michaels."

"Saturday Night Live." Hobbes nodded, glancing around the seat until he finally located the discarded pastry bag. He silently offered me a sweet roll but I still wasn't in the mood for food. "Like you should talk, Darien. Aren't there girls with that name?"

"You're thinking of Dor-ien," I corrected, mimicking Hobbes precise pronunciation.

"That chick on One Life to Live."

"You watch the soaps, man?"

"Whenever I think my life's getting too screwed up, I just tune in, and it helps right away. I've never kidnapped anybody's baby, raised it as my own and then had to give it up," He said with a smirk.

"I usta like that guy who was on years ago, Marco Dane."

"My man." Hobbes held up his palm, still covered with crumbs from the croissant he'd broken in half, and I gave him a high five.

"Yeah, I could see you identifying with him," I agreed, finally finding some joy in the morning. This was the way it was supposed to be, me and my partner on the same wave length, shooting the breeze before the action. "Short, cocky New York gangster with attitude. He's you with more hair."

"Who you calling short, bean pole." Hobbes shot back good naturedly. He took a bite of croissant, then sat up abruptly as the ornate gates opened up to emit a dark gray Mercedes with one of the male house staff at the wheel. Quickly punching in the phone number into his cell phone, Hobbes related the specifics of the car to the person on the other end. I could hear a woman's voice, slightly tinny but sarcastic and impatient sounding, before he hung up.

"Alex?"

He nodded, finishing the croissant. "She said she'd give us a break in 'bout an hour."

"Good, cause my bladder is starting to protest now."

"Nobody hardly ever leaves there, nobody hardly ever comes in, we got his phones tapped, but we never catch him sayin' anything incriminating. How's he doing it?"

"I keep going back to the maid." I said. "She's out every afternoon like clockwork."

"Yeah, but Fawkes, we've followed her. She's not doin' anything. She goes to the same place, and the owner checks out clean. We never see her exchanging anything, and she's always got the same loaf a'bread and pastries."

"What if it's in the bread?" I said softly.

His eyes widened, glowing like two dark chestnuts roasting on the proverbial open fire. I could see almost see the gears turning in his head as he considered my suggestion.

"Baked right in?" He made stuffing motions with his hands to illustrate the baker's actions kneading and rolling the dough around…uh, dough, or something negotiable.

"Like the twelve vitamins and iron in Wonder bread," I said.

"Ugh." Hobbes frowned. "We can't just tail the maid to the bakery, so we'll have to be in place ahead of time. Then you can do a little invisible shuffle and check out what's really goin' on with Mr. Baker-man."

"Stick my finger in the bread?" I suggested, "Break off a hunk?"

"Could be the pie." Hobbes shrugged. "Stick in your thumb, pull out a plum."

"And say what a good boy am I," I joked, but the words caught in my throat. I wasn't a good boy and had never been one. This revelation regarding Liz had thrown me, I felt off kilter and naïve. How could I have trusted her so implicitly? Because I needed to be able to trust in someone, and I'd burned my bridges with the rest of my family.

Hobbes was talking with Alex again on the cell, but I tuned them out, my head pounding from too little sleep, too much caffeine and about one hundred thirty pounds of stress in the form of my ex-partner. I wanted to rest, turn off all the memories, but with my eyes closed I kept seeing the two of us together.

I'd been tall for my age from the very start--I'll bet I was a tall baby. By the time I was fifteen, I'd already hit six feet, and felt powerful and protective of my 'little woman'. It had given me an illusion of adulthood that was as false as a carnival mask. Liz was the adult and she never let me really forget it, bossing me around and then rewarding my efforts with sex to keep me in line. I'd never really thought about our age difference in terms of an adult and a minor. Not much more than a child. Sex with a fourteen year old. _God, was I screwed._

"Fawkes." Hobbes gave my shoulder a shake, and I could feel that the car was moving.

I must have fallen asleep with my memories of Liz's behind wiggling through a tight opening to get into the locked summer mansion where we'd scored over ten thousand in diamond and emerald jewelry. What had happened to that money anyway?  
I'm fairly sure that adding to everything else she did, Liz screwed me out of my percentage of the profits just because I was the junior partner. Damn.

"Fawkes! Are you even there?" Hobbes raised his voice.

"Yeah, I'm awake, just havin' strange dreams." I shook my head to dispel the lingering images. To tell the absolute truth, Liz hadn't even been all that beautiful. She was certainly no Claire.

"You'll be happy to know that we're off stake out duty for the rest of the afternoon." Bobby boasted proudly.

"How?" I asked in amazement.

"A little Hobbes finesse. We're now on bakery detail." He slid the car into the parking lot of a Taco Bell. "Alex took our place on Hemlock Street."

"About time. I guess I was kinda knocked out," I said, climbing out, suddenly famished. I'd start with a Steak Chalupa, follow up with a Burrito Supreme and Nachos Bell Grande and maybe one of those chocolate tacos for dessert.

"Hard night?" Hobbes asked in sympathy.

"Bobby, don't do that."

"What?"

"Look at me like you got my life all figured out. That subject is no longer up for discussion."

"Not going where I'm not wanted, my friend," Hobbes declared proudly, but he looked hurt. "I'll be there whenever, though, you know that."

I felt like the world's biggest jerk. "I do, Hobbes, man."

I ate and I was hungry, but the meal didn't have the camaraderie that lunch with Bobby usually did. I just wanted to chuck the whole investigation and walk away, go somewhere to get my head straightened out. Problem was, I don't think such a place exists, and it would take a millennium to fix what was wrong with me. Sticking with Hobbes was probably the smartest course of action.

Back at the Agency, Hobbes collared Eberts and they both surfed the net, trolling for whatever information they could glean on the owner of the bakery, who had the incongruous name of James Muffin. After that I couldn't get the sound of John Lithgow's voice in Shrek saying _"Do YOU know the Muffin man? Yes, I KNOW the muffin man…"_

Unfortunately, Mr Muffin was clean. Either he'd managed to keep underground his whole criminal career, which I found completely improbable, or he'd only entered the world of illegal dough recently.

This made the Fat Man less than enthusiastic about sending us out on another reconnaissance to ferret out the maid and her Muffin's nefarious deeds. He was downright obstructive about our going out again, ranting about forbidding us from pursuing an alternative line of investigation since the maid had been tailed numerous times without success. We were to—"get out butts back on Hemlock, pronto, and stop being such insubordinate malcontents who just wanted to undermine a perfectly good investigation with superfluous facts."

I pointed out that I was planning to follow her invisibly, but this didn't change his mind much until Eberts suggested we check to see if the maid had a mug shot.

Bingo. Maria Estalita Consuela Villanova had a rap sheet that rivaled mine.

"Perhaps I misjudged your interpretations of this case," The Official said with a cough. "Proceed with your line of inquiry."

It was obvious that Eberts was holding back a grin when he printed out Maria's stats. He and Bobby shared an unprecedented moment of conspiracy against authority as they hunched over the files to read them more carefully.

I didn't contribute much to the afternoon, wrapped in my own cocoon of misery. Every thought, every memory led me back to Liz Morgan. She had influenced every facet of my life. Everything I knew, my former occupation, had all been orchestrated by her. I hurt deep inside, a bruise that ached straight through me.

I wanted to banish her image from my brain, but she was burned on my retinas, stamped on my soul and her imprint on me couldn't be denied.

I'd have died for her. I'd worshipped the ground she walked on. How could she have done this to me, ripped childhood away and replaced it with something twisted?

If I had spent that night in jail after the attempted car theft, if Bobby Hobbes had been there would things have been different? Undoubtedly, but it was like wishing for horses, there was no use in thinking about it. None of that had happened and I had to live with what I had.

"Darien?" Claire's cool, sweet voice sounded concerned but she was the last person I wanted to talk to about this. I like Claire, but she already knows more about me than my mother ever did. Some things need to remain private.

Strangely enough, I didn't mind Hobbes knowing. Yeah, I fought kicking and screaming against the truth, but if someone had to know this most guarded secret, I was glad it was Hobbes. Somewhere, deep inside, Bobby and I are linked, joined in a special way I don’t begin to understand. Who knew I'd trust my soul to a little manic depressive, balding New Yorker who knew all the words to the National Anthem? But Bobby understood the truth in me when I was watching my entire life collapse under a mountain of lies.

"Are you all right?" Claire continued. "You look really pale."

"I'm good, Claire." I wearily held up my right wrist to flash the snake tattoo in her face. She'd given me an injection of counteragent two days before and even using a little quicksilver this afternoon wouldn't put me into the danger zone.

"I'm not always asking about the gland," she said slightly huffily, giving her long hair a shake to get it out of her face. "Anything you want to get off your chest?"

My first impulse was to lash out, cause I was angry and my emotions were jumping all over like I've swallowed the worm in a tequila bottle and it wanted back out. I had to force down the irrational streak in order to speak in a civil tone. "Claire…just had a long week stuck in the car with Hobbes."

"Stir crazy?" She gave me a quirky smile.

"You don't know the half of it," I admitted, feeling kinder towards her.

"Fawkes!" Bobby stuck his head around the corner of the hall where I'd been lurking in hopes of avoiding people. It hadn't worked, since Claire had found me, and now my partner. "Get a move on, you're on, Inviso-boy."

"Going to see the muffin man?" I quipped.

"Oh, really, can you bring me back a blueberry one?" Claire asked with interest.

"Anything for you, my dear." Hobbes gave her a courtly bow, shoving me down the hall with his other hand.

"Hobbes, this had better work cause this whole case is giving me a major headache." I squinted as we exited the building, shoving on my sunglasses against the late afternoon sun. It was still surprisingly cold for San Diego, but the sun was like a laser beam, lancing through my brain with sharp rays.

"A headache?" Hobbes stopped so suddenly I plowed right into him. That's the trouble with having a partner who's head is below my eye level, I tend to trip over him.

"Not that kind." I held out my right wrist for the second time in ten minutes, counting the gland as just one of a long line of things that had really fucked up my life.

So many ifs--if I hadn't met Liz, if I hadn't got thrown in the pen when I was twenty one years old, it I hadn't tried to save that old geezer's life and gotten nabbed on my third offense, maybe I wouldn't have agreed to let Kevin put the gland in my head and then maybe he wouldn't have died…Things kept whirling around in my brain until I found it hard to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. Mr. Muffin seemed so far removed from me, what did it matter? What did I matter? Everything I did just ended up covered in crap anyway. I'd caused my brother's death and hadn't been enough of a thief and a man to keep the woman I'd loved.


	3. Three

Truths and Dares

(part three)  
"Don't scare me like that, Fawkes." Hobbes swatted at my arm, "Maybe you should preface statements like that with 'it's not a QSM headache, buddy.'"

"I'll keep that in mind, Bobby," I replied sarcastically, climbing into the familiar confines of Golda. "Can we get going, I'd like to knock off at a decent time of night."

"Got plans?" he asked while driving through afternoon traffic.

"Just me, myself and a six pack of cold brew."

"Sounds like you need a drinking buddy."

"I'm feeling stingy, I want the whole six to myself."

"BYOB, I can handle that." Hobbes nodded, being remarkably insistent. I didn't want him there, I wanted time to wallow in my own private misery. Hobbes would try to jolly me out of it, which is, in itself, a weird thing, since Hobbes can be Mr. Depression personified.

"Hobbes, not tonight."

"Fawkes," he said, and there was a warning tone in his voice that told me he wasn't taking no for an answer. "I'm comin' with. You're alone too much already, okay? You don't need to be alone tonight."

God, I couldn't handle him being nice to me. I wanted the anger back, the accusations because they felt more real, more what I deserved. I didn't deserve to have him stand behind me in case I fell apart. That wasn't going to happen, regardless. What was in the past was past and there was no use dwelling on it. I was just going to get quietly drunk tonight so I could sleep. If Bobby Hobbes wanted to watch, so be it.  
"Bobby, have you ever seen Duclare?" I asked, to switch subjects away from myself. We'd parked at the back of the immense parking lot which served a Safeway, a Blockbuster outlet, a women's aerobic studio, a bank and Patisserie de Paris. A lofty name for Muffin's little bread and pastry operation. Maybe he was squirreling away his illegal gains to take a trip over to Paris to attend the Cordon Bleu school. As Emeril would say, "Kick it up a notch!"

"Sure I've seen him." Hobbes had pulled out his binoculars again, the better to see a couple of blondes in tight blue jeans purchasing their after work out treats. "Eberts has a picture--he kinda looks like that guy…you know the one on MASH."

"Hawkeye?"

"Burns."

"Ferret Face?" Okay, that was not exactly my idea of a gangster type, but I guess I was resorting to stereotypes. Remembering the grainy, poorly focused photo, I nodded, which only exacerbated my headache. "Yah, I can see why you'd think so, but I mean when did you last see him? Hell, when did ANYONE see him last?"

"Whaddya mean, Fawksey?" he asked thoughtfully. "You think he ain't even there?"

"Hobbes, we see guards, maids, chauffeurs, and once, the night guys saw his wife."

"Goin' to the airport. She went to Greece."

"Where she's holed up in a villa with the kids," I added, to show I'd read the briefings, too. "But nobody else goes in or out."

"Nobody," Hobbes echoed, he'd put the binoculars down to focus those brown eyes on me. If I didn't watch out I could drown in those eyes and then I'd be lost. Lost and gone, the last of Darien Fawkes. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing after all…

"And we're stuck watching the house because we think some big money's going to change hands." I turned my head, watching some over burdened mommy try to juggle two grocery bags and a double stroller filled to the overflowing with twins and their minutiae. Anything to stop myself from diving straight into the warmth of Bobby's eyes and turning off the world.

"Yeah, Duclare's heavy into drug running and arms," Hobbes agreed. "Lotsa guns."

"Which just sit in a supposedly abandoned warehouse waiting for this pay off."

"Fawkes, if you have a point, which I'm beginning to doubt, spit it out."

"I think there isn't any Jeffery Duclare--not anymore." I shoved my hands into my pants pockets, which is tricky sitting down in a car seat, but I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch Bobby. He was so close. His presence filled the van. I warred between wanting to rip the scabs off my soul and letting them bleed or curling up in Bobby's arms so I could heal. Clenching my hands in my pockets, I was able to get back onto the subject. "He's gone, or retired or something and we're sitting here lookin' stupid waiting for something that isn't going to happen."

"The guns exist," Hobbes argued.

He had a point. I myself had gone into the warehouse, quicksilvered, naturally, and seen them.

"We sit looking at his house. The guns sit in the warehouse. Nothing's moving!"

The cheery ring of Bobby's cell stopped any further discussion, and the news he got made him sit up straighter. "Maria's in her car, driving out of the gate. Better get into position."

That was it. Hobbes put the troops on ready, I slid into the land of silver and followed a teenaged kid in through the patisserie door to avoid making the jangly door bell ring twice. The boy bought a donut for fifty cents, and while Muffin's back was turned bagging the sweet, the sneaky kid dropped a sack of day old bread into his backpack. If it hadn't been so sad, I would have laughed. It was all I could do to reach out and stop him from his life of crime. I was no Liz Morgan, so I didn't. Probably that's a good thing. Besides, Maria came in as Sneaky left.

I was standing to the right of the counter, on Muffin's side, near the refrigerator in case he felt the chilly draft I give off. Maria asked for "the usual" and the baker gave her such a sappy love starved, yet guilty, look I knew we had him cold.

Now just pass the dough, I mentally commanded, acutely aware of the squadron of agents hiding in the parking lot. Muffin let his hand just brush hers as he pointed out some freshly baked cookies and then opened a drawer under the main display case to remove a long, fat loaf of French bread. Ever so casually, he placed it on the glass case, inquiring if Maria wanted the cookies or some chocolate cake. Her sour expression made it obvious she only tolerated his romantic looks because of the money. When Muffin bent to retrieve a truffle cake from the lower shelf, I broke the bread in two.

Bingo.

Plastic wrapped bags of money spilled out onto the linoleum in front of the baker's horrified gaze. I saw a bundle of thousand dollar bills before he snatched it up. Hobbes must have had his binoculars on me the whole time, cause all hell broke loose after that. Maria tried to make a run for it, but she didn't even get to the door. The jangly door bell started clanging like a manic Salvation Army Santa at Christmas as the troops surged through the door. Under cover of all the confusion, I let the quicksilver flake off, and ripped the bell clapper off before my head exploded.

I was right about Duclare. He was dead.

Heavily armed agents stormed his house and grounds, with five star agent Alex Monroe at the fore, and found the mansion was being run quite efficiently by the servants. Turns out Maria was a born leader. After the boss man died of a massive stroke, she just gathered up the reins of power and continued on as if nothing had happened, using the connections she'd made in the crime world to build up her empire. Maria had cleaned the houses of every mobster in Southern California, and when she needed a tidy way to move and launder money, she just called a few old employers.

Seems Mr. Muffin may not have had a record, but he did have a few connections of his own. His sister was married to a big wig in the 'import/export' business in LA and was only too happy to set her brother up in his own shop conveniently located right near Hemlock Street to further her husband's mob associations. So, a lovely little circle had formed, leaving the Feds out in the cold. So much for intel.

Bobby and I left the troops to mop up at Patisserie de Paris. None of them seemed to mind, since eating the wares was a major perk. They found several other loaves of bread with hidden finances, but the éclairs, madelines and petit fours were all perfectly edible. Bobby remembered to snag the last blueberry muffin for Claire before we bugged out. Heavy metal guitar reverbs resounded so loudly in my head, Ozzy Osbourne would have winced. Personally, I've never gone in for head banger music, but if that's what would make it stop, I was all for smacking my head against a hard surface.

After parking the van in the snarl of cars clogging Hemlock, Hobbes headed up to the house to join in the arrests. I stayed behind. It seemed suddenly intrusive to just march right into the dead man's house without so much as a warrant, tromping all over what was left of his life. Criminals get very little consideration, I know. I just wanted to go home and die. I didn't care about Duclare, or Maria and her Muffin man. I no longer even wanted to think about Liz, although I knew she'd feature in my nightmares and depressions for a long time to come.

What did I want, besides getting totally, utterly smashed until next week? I was so drained of any real happiness it took me a long time to figure that out.

Standing there in the late afternoon sun, leaning against Golda's paneled side to draw in the heat that radiated off the metal, I knew. I wanted Hobbes.

I wanted Hobbes to drive me home, and fuck me until I couldn't think any longer. Until all I could sense and feel was him.

"Darien?" An old lady voice broke me out of my reverie.

"Hello, Iris." I took a breath, shoving all the crap down inside me so it wouldn't show.

"Well, this is quite a production, isn't it? I don't usually stay out this late in the afternoons when it's been so cold lately, but I do like police action shows." She laughed, leaning on her walker with a twinkle in those cornflower blue eyes. "It's like my own private episode of Starsky and Hutch."

"Always liked those guys," I agreed. When I was ten I'd coveted Starsky's red and white striped Gran Torino.

"Jeffrey Duclare died, didn't he?" she asked quietly, watching agents carry boxes of evidence out to waiting cars.

"So I've heard." It had been the first thing that Alex had ascertained. Duclare had been dead for over a month, buried neatly in a plot in the back yard. No wonder the wife had run for Greece. The morgue wagon was parked up closest to the house until police could dig up the body. Just one more in a string of charges Maria could add to her rap sheet.  
"He was a nice man," Iris contiuned with a shake of her curly white hair. "I talked to him many times."

"Duclare? The mobster?"

"Don't you watch the Sopranos, Darien?" She laughed sweetly. "Even mobsters can be nice men. He'd see me walking by every day and call hello. Once even stopped his Mercedes in my driveway and brought up a bouquet of roses. Now, if my husband had been alive, I wouldn't have accepted them, but Joseph's been gone a long time and a girl does enjoy getting flowers once in a while."

"I'll bet," I agreed, but I couldn't get up much enthusiasm, even for a sweet old lady like Iris.

"Darien." She placed a parchment fine hand on my arm, patting gently. "Whatever it is that's bothering you, the truth is always the best way to go."

How did she know? It was indescribably eerie. "There's my partner, I gotta get going."

"Maybe we can talk again, sometime?" she inquired. "Have another walk and a chat in the afternoon. I always enjoy a small sherry after my constitutional."

I knew I'd pegged her right as a drinking gal. "I'd like that, Iris, and keep your eyes open. You see a lot more than most people."

"Darien, my boy, you could steal my heart away." She beamed when I leaned over and planted a kiss on her wrinkled pink and white cheek. "I've always had the gift of heart sight. You have it, too, I think. But you're grieving over something since yesterday."

"I'll be okay," I said, embarrassed by her insight.

"Of course you will, just remember, taking comfort when you need it is never a crime." Iris laid a finger along the side of her nose with an impertinent grin and hobbled up to her front drive. It took me a minute to recollect why the gesture looked so familiar, but it finally came to me. With her clear blue eyes, and cheeky expression, she looked just like Paul Newman at the end of the Sting.

"C'mon, Fawkes, stop flirting with the neighbors." Hobbes peered up at me with curiosity in his face, "How ya doing?"

"Whaddya mean, how am I doing?"

"Headaches, the gland, how's the monitor? You need a shot?" he asked impatiently.

"No, that can wait another day."

"You did good out there, Fawkes. You saw stuff the rest of us were overlooking."

"Stood to reason he was dead," I said tonelessly, ignoring his praise. I hurt too much to feel pleasure. "Else he would have come out. Hard to run your territory hiding inside a wall." Like a prison.

Hard to have a life when you're behind bars and I felt like I'd been behind bars my whole life. "Can we just leave?"

"Got to debrief with the 'Fish." Hobbes shrugged elaborately. "Not like I've got any thing new to contribute."

"Good, then let's just get out of here." I swung open the door to the van.

"Where to?" he asked with a slight edge to his voice, mixed with something else I couldn't identify.

I knew Hobbes was worried about me. What'd he think I was going to do, try something stupid like suicide? The idea suddenly took my breath away, because it hadn't been in my conscious mind until then. Suicide. There was no way I could kill my self, even though the idea of being gone had such allure.

I didn't know where to go. Somewhere far away, if I had my choice, like Bali Hai. But even if we managed to escape the official debriefing tonight, I knew we'd have to face Charlie Borden in the morning.

"How bout my place?" Hobbes offered. He'd already started the engine, pulling carefully out of the tangle of cars on Hemlock Street, so I could hardly complain. "Order in some dinner? There's a great new restaurant around the corner from me, makes a mean fish taco."

Hobbes had said that to get me going. Fish tacos always sounded like something only SpongeBob would eat, so I gave a stab at the banter, but it fell flat. "You been hanging out at Chevy's, Bobby?"

"S'not Chevy's." He smiled at the effort, "A little salmon, some onions, some green chili sauce, wrap it up in a warm tortilla. S'good, I'm telling you."

"I'm not very hungry."

"Too bad, I'm ordering the fish tacos, and you're going to eat one," Hobbes declared with finality.

I ate one, and part of another. Hobbes was right, they were good, and there was corn muffins and guacamole with crispy, freshly made chips. I downed a Corona in one gulp and was reaching for another when he stopped my hand.

"No more."

"Hobbesy, I bought the beer, I get to drink it. Remember my master plan? Get drunk, sleep. Pretty simple."

"You need to talk."

"Crap, Bobby, YOU want to talk. You want to dissect this into some perverted, evil plan on Liz's part to corrupt little Darien Fawkes!" I jerked away from him, walking over to the kitchen counter to claim a long necked bottle and the opener. "Well, you know what? Whatever happened, I liked it."

"You liked it?" He countered, his dark eyes sad and hooded. "Then how come you're so angry at her?"

"Because." I chugged about half the bottle of beer, the foam fizzing up my nose, "Because….I shouldn't have."

"It's not a matter of whether or not _you_ shouldn't have." Bobby stood, coming over to wrap a gentle arm around my waist, "It's that _she_ shouldn't have. She had no right."   
He was making small circles with the palm of his left hand on my lower back and I wanted to sink right into his arms and bawl.

"If she'd offered you drugs instead of sex, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, because you'd recognize the harm she did. But because it was sex, and it made you feel good…"

Iris's **words** , taking comfort when you need it is never a crime, came back to me. I had wanted comfort, and Liz had wanted control and power. We'd been at cross purposes from the first.

She'd committed a crime by any definition you wanted to use. Statutory rape. Corrupting a minor. Ugly words to describe what I had held as a perfect magical afternoon.

 **It hadn't been, I could see that now.**

"If she did something illegal, why do I feel like the criminal?" I asked, barely able to make myself form the words.

"Because deep down inside you, that's how you think of yourself." Hobbes cocked his head back to look up at me, his face full of compassion and strength. " _She_ taught you that. Another thing she was wrong about."

He'd stopped the slow, almost hypnotizing stroking along my spine and held out a hand to lead me back to the couch. I felt drained and angry at the same time, unable to separate what I was feeling from what I was supposed to be feeling. What was right? Somehow Bobby, small, manic, secret agent extraordinaire, seemed to know.

"Tell me something, Fawkes?"

I couldn't take my eyes off him, like he was the oracle of Delphi and the secrets of the universe were all wrapped up in that tight muscled, hyperkinetic body.

"What?" I replied listlessly, the bottle of beer still held between the first two fingers of my right hand. I remembered it's existence and swallowed the remainder of the alcohol in one gulp, the booze finally loosening me up, so the tight, hard shell I'd maintained all afternoon could crack off. It would take a whole lot more than two beers to get me drunk, though.

"Would you have taken a fourteen year old to bed when you were twenty-eight, even if she begged you?"

The beer in my stomach suddenly threatened a return appearance and I had to bolt for the bathroom to gag over the toilet.

What a totally unexpected, visceral response to his question.

I heaved but the sensation dissipated swiftly without any nasty consequences and I was left even more slack-limbed than I'd been before.

"You all right?" Bobby's voice bordered on panicked, and I gave him the best attempt at a grin I could muster under the circumstances.

"Swallowed wrong," I apologized, letting him help me up. "That question threw me for a loop."

"Cause you know the difference between right and wrong." He said astutely. "The thought of sex with a kid nauseates you."

"Yesterday, I got to thinking about…that," I admitted, moving back to the couch. I sank down, the leather squeaking slightly when Bobby sat down next to me. "I couldn't--not even to a girl in college. They're too young. We'd be miles apart."

"What if she begged you?" he persisted, "Would you?"

I shook my head, closing my eyes, but that didn't stop the images in my brain of me and Liz sprawled across her pink cabbage rose sheets, legs entwined around each other.

"I didn't think so. So, what makes it wrong for you and okay for Liz?" he asked.

"It wasn't okay," I whispered.

"Say it again, louder."

"It wasn't okay."

I don't think I was any louder, but my conviction was stronger.

What I'd done was look for love in all the wrong places, as the old song says. No crime in that. I'd found Liz and convinced myself that what she held out was what I needed, because nobody else, not Kevin, Uncle Peter, Aunt Celia or the guidance counselor at the high school, had held out anything at all.

Liz had taken my hopes and teenaged exuberance and corrupted them for her own uses. I'd been dazzled by her brilliance and charisma, but ultimately I'd been a tool. My own needs had been subjugated until even the stars in my eyes couldn't blind me to the truth. She'd thought she could mold me and control me with sex. Only I got tired of being used, manipulated and taken for granted. Everyone else in my life had done it, but they'd been family. I'd wanted Liz as my family, but she'd truly done worse than they had, which hadn't been much to start with. She'd used me against myself, and I'd let her do it.

I started thinking about how much I'd given to her.

I'd fallen hook, line and sinker for her lies and bowed down before her because she'd given me the gift of sex, a gift I'd been too young to understand and too immature to handle. But I'd cherished her words, her actions like she was the god of all thieves and I was her student. How different, then, was my relationship with Hobbes?

I'd come to him angry, manipulated and abandoned. He'd educated me in the ways of undercover operatives, schooled me in the art of spying and then, once he'd established my trust, we'd begun a sexual relationship. Tentative at first, but it had been going on for some time now, especially after tense situations or the exhilarating conclusion to some particularly gritty case. It was such a release to make love to your cherished partner on a wide, cool mattress and let the tension ease out in sexual bliss. Was it a mistake to have let Hobbes under my skin like that? Once again, I was in the exact same scenario--the student following his mentor into dangerous, possibly illegal areas and then having sex afterwards. History repeating itself like a continuous loop of screwed up emotions.

"Fawksey? Where are you?" Hobbes' hand was warm along my thigh. There was no sexual groping, just a friendly touch to ground me in the here and now. Liz would have immediately gone for the gonads, but Hobbes' hand just stayed, gripping enough so I felt his solid presence through the fog of depression and guilt that surrounded me.

Hobbes was my lighthouse. He never wavered. He'd never used me. Right from the start, Hobbes had been about truth. I could trust him because he'd saved my life more than once--at the possible expense of his own. He wasn't Liz.

In Bobby Hobbes, I'd finally found a real friend who understood what partner meant. Fifty-fifty wasn't just a fraction to him. Bobby Hobbes lets me in and lets me take charge of my own life. If I screwed up, he'd be there to pick me up, and if I succeeded, he'd be the first one there with the champagne.

The first time I'd soured a job when I was just short of fifteen, Liz had lit into me so hard I'd been afraid to breathe loudly for a week. The only time she'd celebrated with me was when she'd scored big on a job. My own successes and failures at high school or on the basketball court, the one other place in my life where I’d had any margin of success, were nothing to her. They only got in the way of her plans.

A real friend. A lover. Bobby Hobbes loved me and would do whatever it takes to make sure I'm okay. Even force me to look at things I don't want to see, because they'd destroy me if I don't deal with them.

I'm not sure I'll ever know what Liz's agenda was. Why me? What did she see in me? A gullible, willing kid with a larcenous streak who'd follow her anywhere? How had she known that first day when I'd stood, half cocky and half guilty, trying to hide the bent coat hanger under my windbreaker? I don't know, and I sure as hell know I'm not going to track her down to ask her, but what Liz had done hadn't come from love. I'm going to have to deal with the fact that I'll never understand her motivations.

I can only barely recall my own that year. But what Bobby does for me, well, it's nothing that I wouldn't do for him.

I love him. And he loves me. It's simple. There's no hidden meanings anywhere. It's maybe the first time I've had someone in my life who knew all my secrets. We can't hide from each other, because we're imbedded deep into each other's souls. He loves me in spite of all the sick and evil things I've been through in my life, what I've done and what's been done to me. Hobbes is no saint, either, and he's permanently missing a screw, but I wouldn't change one cell to make him into something he's not. Maybe I've matured finally, because I can see Bobby Hobbes with clear eyes and still want to be with him.

"Darien?" Hobbes rarely uses my first name, and just the sound of the fear in his voice pulls me back to shore.

I took a deep breath, leaning back into the padded back of the couch. "Tryin' to sort things through, Hobbesy," I croaked. My voice sounded cracked and old, as if it's been years since I spoke and not just minutes.

"Kinda thought I'd lost you there for a minute." He moved his warm hand up to cup my cheek, planting a kiss as sweet as Miss Iris could have given on my eyelid. "It scared me."

"Does it ever stop hurting?" I asked, not expecting an answer. So many things in my life hurt right now. What was one more? Except this hurt was soul deep. I had wanted something desperately. I had wanted the one thing I hadn't been given, love. I had needed Liz to love me, and she hadn't. I hadn't been anything but a tool, an inconvenience, and an embarrassment to anyone I'd ever been with.

Maybe not my mom, since I don't think it was her choice to die in a car accident, but everyone else had either used me or given up on me. My brother, my relatives, Liz and even Casey, my last girl friend, who hadn't believed the truth when I said I hadn't molested that old man.

Hobbes offered me hope again. A hope I hadn't had since--maybe forever.

"I don't know when it stops hurting," he said, drawing me in so my head rested on the curve of his shoulder. I turned my body so I could curl into his warmth, his essential goodness, and rest. "Some things hurt forever, but you get used to the pain and it just becomes part of who you are." The little break in his voice spoke of experience, and he linked his arms around me, cuddling me like a small child, only I was bigger than he was. "But you're a survivor, kid. You can roll with the punches, and I know it feels like you've been kicked in the guts right now, but that'll fade. That woman did those things TO you. They aren't what you _are_. What you _are_ is my friend. My partner. Your conscience has never let you get away with the kind shit that's been done to you, cuz you know what it's like to be on the receiving end. And that's why I love you, my friend. Because you've been hurt and you've chosen not to hurt anybody else. You may not believe it yet, Fawkes, but you're one of the good guys. You always have been. Your record, your punk attitude, it's a smokescreen, and I've got x-ray vision."

"You're Superman?" I smiled, my lips moving over the skin of his chest and I let myself kiss his collarbone. The aching in my head, my bones and most of all, my heart, starting to lessen with each intake of breath.

"I can see through you." He kissed the top of my head. "Nothing will ever make me change my mind on one thing, Inviso-boy, and that's that you're my friend. A white hat, in spite of the attitude and the whining and the complaining at the end of the day. We're together. And I love you."

"I know," I echoed Han Solo's words to Princess Leia. Still, fears gripped my belly: the kicked in the gut feeling Hobbes had mentioned not stopping. One of those fears that would just fade eventually or was it something else? Liz had never said the words I love you, but I'd believed that they'd been there, none the less. What if I was mistaken again?

"It's not the same," Hobbes said, just a hint of his anger from the day before coloring his voice. He'd known what I was thinking without me saying a word. "If you're comparing me to her, think again, pal. There's a world of difference."

"I know, but it's hard to get past the delusions."

"No delusions here, Penelope. I'm as far from her as a person could be, and it's not just because I have a dick and she didn't. It ain't just because there's only seven years between us instead of fourteen. You're an adult now and you have a say in all of this. You're my partner and most of all I _love_ you, Darien Fawkes. She never did."

"No." I wrapped my fingers around the lapel of his wool sports coat, hanging on for dear life. I'd been in love. She'd been a player. I'd wanted a mother and a friend, and she hadn't provided on either level. Bobby Hobbes never bailed on his partner and he'd come through in spades in the friend department. As a lover, he was aces. "I love you, Bobby, Don't you dare leave me."

"I don't take dares, but if I ever see that woman again, I promise you, I'll kill her for what she did to you," Hobbes whispered fiercely into the crown of my skull, his hands holding onto me just as tightly.

I had a champion in life, and I'd ended up the winner. Bobby Hobbes was a friend, a lover-  
The mirror to my soul.

Fini


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